Broken in Laura, Saskatchewan
I took this photo a year ago, or I should say, a photo of the same scene. Last year it was an abandoned church, this year the church has caved in leaving a lot of wreckage. Nothing, it seems is permanent.
Symbolically, the church figures in my youth where I grew up as a Catholic who made sporadic visits to church with an extended Catholic family. There really wasn’t a sense of piousness in the family. Rather, it was more about routine, convenience and bits of superstition. If there was anything more interesting or compelling to do, church was banished. I did get to be an altar boy briefly in one of the many communities that were home in my youth. All of that said, I did feel I was a spiritual person and that I might one day become a priest. But, the foundation was weak, and that made a difference.
Today, I don’t consider myself a Catholic. I haven’t replaced that church with any other church, Christian or non-Christian. However, I do think that somehow I am a more spiritual person in spite of the fact that I don’t have a church anymore. Perhaps, like the church in the photography, the exterior church must crumble in order for a spiritual inner centre to become the true seat of what it is to be a spiritual person.